


Effervescent

by kloudbby



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 08:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16472087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kloudbby/pseuds/kloudbby
Summary: This fic is entirely based on that one text post on tumblr from user cockmcstuffins that says, "bella was lucky she didn't have a cell phone of any kind because you know ya boi edward would be blowing up that phone 24-7 going "saw a snail today....effervescent" or some shit equivalent." I regret nothing.This fic was beta'd and co-written by my good friend Abi, and I am eternally grateful to them for letting me write this and for agreeing to help me. We really went out and wrote a Twilight fan fiction in the year 2018.Follow us both on tumblr! Cloud [kloudbby] + Abi [sleepy-punk]. Leave comments and talk to us on our blogs!Enjoy this weird brain child of ours. (Fair warning, it starts off a little slow.)





	Effervescent

Forks was cold and rainy, almost year-round. That was something that had taken some getting used to, when I left Arizona and my mom to come live with Charlie. I had kind of hated that, when I first arrived. I wasn’t exactly used to the rain and the cold that came with living in Washington state. Warmth had become more my speed over the years. But, after having been in Forks for a year already, I was making peace with the cold.

It wasn’t a hard thing to do. Edward was cold all the time, after all. It didn’t bother me when his icy cold fingers curled around my waist at night as we laid in my bed, the window he had come through wide open to let the soft breeze in. It didn’t bother me when he kissed me, and the smooth planes of his lips were cold enough to make me shiver. I had come to enjoy the cold, because it was the cold that brought me Edward, and it was the cold that was Edward. 

I believed I was making progress with the way I was adapting to the cold that enveloped Forks, and the way I was welcoming the cold, marble-like skin of the Cullens. 

But then Edward left. And suddenly, the cold was too much. 

It seeped deep into my bones, chilling me from the inside out. No matter how many layers I tugged on, it felt nearly impossible to stop shaking long enough to do anything other than lay on the floor and let the emptiness overwhelm me completely. 

I knew that my recent behavior was hard on Charlie, but I couldn't even bring myself to feel embarrassed knowing that he had likely confided in Billy Black, who in turn relayed all of this to Jacob. After the incident with Jessica and the motorcycle, I didn’t exactly have anyone I could spend time with, and since Charlie was pushing me to get some social interaction, Jacob seemed like the best bet. He was a nice enough guy, after all. I didn’t see any real reason to tuck tail and run away from him. 

So, I didn’t. 

And the moment I saw Jacob again, and he swept me up into a hug, I couldn’t help but press my face against his neck and think, warmth. Because Jacob was the epitome of warmth. It was like he was the sun, my own personal sun right here on earth, blindingly warm and vibrant in a cold, rainy reality.  
He just laughed and ruffled my hair, one big hand grazing my cheek. “How are you Bells?” His eyes searched my face, taking in the purple shadows under my eyes that were almost a permanent feature. 

I ducked my head, feeling my face heat at the tender gesture, and feeling somewhat embarrassed by my appearance. Still, I shrugged, tucking my hands into my pockets to keep them to myself and saying, “I’m okay, thanks. How are you?” I looked back up at him. “I swear, you get bigger every time I see you.” And it was true. Jake had always been taller than me, as kids, but now, he seemed to loom over me. 

A sheepish grin spread across his face, and he rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. “You make it sound like I’m some kid you haven’t seen since Thanksgiving, or something.” He gave a breathy laugh, then smiled at me warmly. “I’m good Bells. Really good, now that you’re here. But, what, exactly, brings you here? You never come to The Res.”

I didn’t know how to tell him that I was so depressed that Charlie had given me an ultimatum to either get some sun and interaction with another person or I’d be shipped to Jacksonville or wherever it was my mom was. So, I backed up towards my trunk, grabbed the edge of the sheet covering the contents that lay within it, and said as I tugged it back, “I thought we could work on a little project together.” 

Jacob raised a thick eyebrow at me as he took in the two ratty motorcycles, opening the trunk to get a better look at what we were working with. I worried at my bottom lip as he crossed his arms over his chest, and I could tell he thought I was crazy. “We don’t have to, you know. I just-... I figured, if anything, you’d be the one to know how to fix these up. I’m sorry, this is...such a stupid idea. I didn’t even ask before bringing these over. But I saw them, and I knew they were going to be thrown out, and I just…” I shrugged as I trailed off, knowing I was rambling. 

The silence that followed seemed to drag before Jacob took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know how to say no to you, Bells.” And before I could process what he was saying, he was pulling one of the bikes out from the bed of my truck and placing it onto the ground, despite my warning to be careful. Honestly, he picked it up as if it weighed nothing, when I knew for certain that it was a lot heavier than it looked. He grabbed the other bike and put it down next to its twin, then looked at me with that wide, warm grin of his and said, “Let’s get started.” 

And that was how I got pulled into Jacob’s orbit. I somehow managed to get close enough to the sun that I could bask in its warmth, and I was drinking in every ounce of it I could. Over the next few weeks, Jacob and I worked on the bikes -- but, really, it was Jake who worked on them, while I provided snacks and commentary. Each day, I’d show up to the garage, and each day, Jake would hug me tight around my waist and ruffle my hair, welcoming me back into his space with open arms. And each day, I’d sit on the wooden box in the garage and watch as he worked, admiring the way his hands went from tense and strong against the metal to gentler and more delicate when he tucked his hair behind his ears when it got in his way. 

“Your hair is getting longer,” I said one day, rolling an apple back and forth in my hands. 

Jake laughed. “I guess so. I don’t really notice much of a difference.” 

“Well,” I said, hugging my knees to my chest on the little crate. “You can’t see it the way I can, that’s all.”

“Oh, is that so?” he asked, looking up at me from where he was. “And how, exactly, do you see it?”

Before I could say something incriminating, two boys burst into the garage with a loud bang, laughing loudly. Jacob looked a bit put out by it, but he quickly recovered as he got onto them to keep it down and then introduced us to each other. Paul and Embry, he said, were two of his good friends, and, according to them, they were here to razz Jake on all the time he had been spending with me but also to see if he’d be attending the bonfire. Whether intentional or out of pure politeness, I found myself invited to the bonfire, and then I found myself agreeing to go. 

The smile on Jake’s face was enough to keep me from feeling weird about agreeing. 

When I got to the bonfire that night, I felt out of place. I didn’t know if what I was wearing -- a thin long sleeve shirt and jeans -- was appropriate, but Jake assured me I looked fine. We settled in by the fire, and Billy began telling one of the stories. I was enthralled before I knew it, hanging on his every word, until he said two that stuck out to me. 

“Cold ones?” I asked Jacob softly, looking at him, furrowing my brow. 

He nodded. “Well, yeah,” he said. “That’s the legend of our tribe, after all. Our ancestors were shapeshifters, and our natural enemy were the cold ones, or the Bloodsuckers. There’s a, uh, running ‘joke’ that that’s what the Cullens are, descendants of whoever the bloodsucker from the legend is, and that’s why they never come this way. Or, came, I guess I should say.” 

Suddenly, even by the fire and the sun that was Jacob, I felt that bone-chilling cold settle into me again. I didn’t want to let Jacob know just how heart shattering just hearing the name was, so instead I just gave a small smile and looked into the fire, scooting closer to him on the log bench we were on, desperately trying to get the cold out of my bones again.

After the bonfire, though, the cold settled in deeper, and it stayed for weeks. It stayed while I was at Charlies, while I was with Jacob on the reservation working on the bikes, and it stayed while I was at school, drifting through town with me like a ghost. I couldn’t shake it.

Eventually, Jacob finished the bikes, and we took them out for a test drive. I immediately crashed and burned, but I got to see his face right beforehand, and in some twisted way, that had made it worth the blood on my forehead. Of course, Jake had been worried about me immediately, and subsequently banned me from riding the bikes. I couldn’t say I blamed him, although I was a tad bit upset about it, because it meant having to find new ways to pass the time.

Luckily, Jacob was as smart as he was comforting, and he managed to fill the days with new activities to get caught up in, and the two of us managed to fall into a steady pattern again. We took pictures, much to my own annoyance and to Jacob’s insistence, and we were generally just enjoying each others company.

Until we weren’t.

Something changed in the air, in the carefully constructed dynamic between the two of us. Jake stopped returning my phone calls, and I was told by Billy that he was sick, that he had mono. I was told to stop calling and to be patient, to wait for Jacob to call me back. But then it had been weeks since I’d seen him, and he was the only other sense of consistency and normalcy in my life outside of Charlie. I needed to see him, to be sure he was okay.

So, I drove to the reservation. 

I didn't know what I would do if Jake told me to leave him alone. The Cullens complete disappearance only served as a horrifying reminder of how isolated I had let myself become, but I pushed that feeling away, and stomped on the gas, trying to coax my truck to go just a little bit faster as it roared in protest. 

The drive felt longer than it ever had, but when I got there, I threw my truck into park, killed the engine, and flung the door open. The rain had started to come down hard, and I squinted in the rain at Jake, who was standing quite a bit away from me. His long black hair had been cut off, and he was shirtless, with a new tattoo on his bicep that was an exact replica of the ones that we had seen on some of the other boys in the tribe, the ones who Jacob had been so unimpressed with due to the way they followed their “leader,” Sam. Just seeing the tattoo was enough to drive me even more crazy.

I walked towards Jacob, my shoes sinking into the mud a little, and I stopped when I was close enough to be able to hear him over the rain. “Jacob,” I said, looking him over again, now that I was closer to him. “I guess you’re not sick anymore.”

“Go home, Bella,” he said, his voice and face hard. His jaw twitched. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t be? Why haven’t you been returning my calls?” I asked, pushing my wet hair from my forehead. “I mean… Jake, I called you everyday. And then your dad told me to back off, and I just… I couldn’t.”

Jacob’s face remained blank, aside from the furrow between his brows. “You should have listened. You shouldn’t be here. Go home.”

Something inside of me felt like it was collapsing, like the carefully constructed support beams had taken a hammer to them. I dug my feet into the mud a little harder, shaking my head. “No. No, I won’t go home. You promised me you wouldn’t do this, Jake. You-you promised.” I knew saying that sounded childish, but I couldn’t help it. Jacob was looking me in the face, telling me to turn around, to leave, and it felt like I was standing in the wet forest beside my house again. “What did they do to you?”  
He scoffed. “Oh, that’s rich. Don’t even go there, Bells.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think, Jake? You’re not you! Look at you! You cut your hair, and you got that tattoo! What did they do to you?”

Before I could wrap my head around what was happening, Jacob was stomping through the mud to stand in front of me, looming over me, looking twice as big as usual. “What did they do to me? They’re helping me, Bella!”

“By isolating you? By cutting you off from your friends?” I snapped. 

I could have sworn I heard a low growl from deep in Jacob's chest. “Get out of here. Just go home. I don’t want you here.” 

In the moment it took for the breath to rush out of me, Jacob turned and trudged away, then broke off a sprint, leaving me standing under the harsh downpour of rain, watching the one thing holding me together run from me. 

Then something surprising happened that night. Jacob showed up in my room, wrapped me up in a hug that I didn’t realize I had missed as much as I had, and said some cryptic things that had my mind rushing back to him when I knew my attention needed to be on Jake and making sure he was okay. I did my best to pretend like it was, but of course he saw through it completely. With a parting hug and kiss on the forehead, Jake scolded me to think harder before he left the same way he came, muttering something about Sam being angry, and hopping out of the window with a soft thud before taking off, leaving me standing in the middle of my room, puzzled.  
That night, I dreamt of him and of wolves.  
\---------------------------------------------------  
After realizing what I’d come to realize from my dreams the next morning, I shoved my feet into my sneakers and climbed into my truck with a quick goodbye to Charlie, pulling out of my driveway and speeding towards the reservation. I needed to confront Jacob, so he could either confirm my suspicions or tell me I was insane. When I got there, I felt like it was a repeat of the day before, but amplified, and I slammed my truck door shut. There was no sign of Jacob, but three other guys were standing outside of his house, talking to each other. I recognized one as Sam, and the other two as Paul and Embry. I stalked towards them, my shoes squelching in the soft, wet ground.  
“What did you do to him?” I barked out, shoving at Sam’s shoulder. Immediately, Paul was stepping forward, a scowl on his face, his jaw tight. I turned to him and stepped forward as well. “What the hell did you do to him?!”

Sam shot an arm out to block Paul from moving again. “Paul, relax!” He looked at me, frowning. “Bella, we’re helping him.”

“Helping him?” I shouted, offended on Jake’s behalf. “How the hell are you helping him by making him join your weird cult? He doesn’t want this! He’s never wanted any part of whatever the hell this is!”

Sam was calm in the face of my anger. It made me even more upset. “Bella, listen. You have no idea what you’re talking about. We are helping Jacob. Don’t you get that? He needs our help, now more than ever.” 

“Get out of here, Bella,” Paul snarled. “You’re not wanted here, and you’re the last thing that Jake needs right now. Go home already!” 

His words made my blood boil, and before I knew what was happening, I brought my hand back and slapped it across Paul’s cheek, making my hand throb with a dull pain upon impact. As soon as my hand connected with his cheek, however, I realized that that was a mistake I should have been more careful not to make, as he began huffing and puffing his chest out as Emery tried his best to get Paul’s attention again, and Sam yelled at me to start running. Paul began trembling, and before I knew it, he practically exploded into a mess of fur and teeth. I turned on my heel, running across the wide clearing towards Jacob’s house, as he came running out. 

“Jake, run!” I screamed, pumping my legs and arms as fast as I could. “Run!”

“Get down, Bells!” 

Jake sprung alive in blur, pulling his shirt over his head as he jumped over me, erupting in his own mess of fur and teeth. I hit the ground, whipping my head around in time to see a wolf the size of a small house standing in front of me, baring its teeth and snarling at the other wolf across the meadow, who was smaller in stature, but no less intimidating. In the blink of an eye, the two of them charged at each other, loud growls and snarls being emitted from the ball of fur and teeth. And for it to be not ten feet in front of me only served to make me more afraid and anxious than I was before. 

The next few minutes were a blur, but eventually I found myself in a house with Sam's fiancé, Emily, and we were joking around about our status as Vampire Girl and Wolf Girl. It felt too normal for it to actually be normal, but before I knew it, this was my new normal. After Paul and Jacob had come back, human and in one piece, and Jake had explained everything to me, I fell into his family, his pack. It was as easy as it had been to fall into the other family, with the same level of danger as before. 

 

Time seemed to zip past me, with Jacob taking picture after picture of us to document everything we did. We finished the bikes (which proved to be a bad idea), saw a few movies, and generally enjoyed each others company. It was easy, at that point, to forget about before.

And then Victoria found me. Which lead to Italy. Which lead to my heart being returned to its rightful spot in my chest. Which lead to the moments of being held while I slept again, trapped within cold, heavy arms. It all lead to being loved by the man I loved again, to be able to hear that slow drawl of his voice, those long, elegant fingers in my hair. It lead to feeling lips as smooth as marble on my forehead, to the window being open and happiness to bloom in my chest. It lead to life being almost the same as before. 

The only thing different was Jake. 

I didn’t get to see him quite as often as I had hoped, but I still made sure to make time for him, especially because I didn’t want a repeat of when the change happened. Edward told me constantly that he was fine with it, agreeing to drop me off halfway to the Reservation because of the treaty. When he kissed me, I always felt like he was looking right at Jake when he did. 

Hanging out with Jacob while Edward was busy was always nice. We explored more of the Reservation, and I got to see Seth, who ended up being Jake’s shadow more often than not the closer he got to when he felt he would change. 

But every time I was with Jake, I got distracted by Edward’s texts. 

It was endearing, the things he’d send me, to let me know he was thinking about me.  
“saw a snail today…effervescent,” he’d say. It always filled me with such warmth. 

I carefully catalogued the things he would send me, making a mental list of all of my favorite messages from him. 

“bella ur eyes are so beautiful in the sun. just completely breathtaking, just like that time when Emmett came crashing in through the window after a fight with Rosalie.” 

“the sun is out already…marvelous, isn’t it? how it comes out everyday?” 

“the water up near Canada is so blue. it reminds me of that Gatorade flavor you like, the blue one. glacier freeze, i think it’s called. beautiful.” 

“He sounds like a douchebag,” Jake snorted as I read off another text.

I frowned. “What are you talking about? Edward’s not a douchebag. He’s…sophisticated and wise. He is one-hundred and fifty years old, you know.” 

Jake just rolled his eyes as he flicked his wrist, sending another rock skipping across the lake. “Whatever, Belles. You wanna be with a guy who thinks snails are ‘effervescent,’ be my guest. You know I’m still a perfectly viable, warm option.” 

“Jacob,” I said, my tone a warning. I was interrupted by another message from Edward. I opened it and read it, smiling as I did. 

“have u ever noticed how soft grass is? it’s like that of a lambs coat.” 

My heart skipped a beat at the message, and I flipped my phone closed. “He’s deep and smart and I like seeing the world through his eyes. It’s interesting.” 

I was almost certain that Jacob’s eyes were going to get stuck rolling around in his head with how hard he rolled them, his toned shoulders sagging. “Oh, my god, Bella. He sounds like such an asshole, like the kind of guy who takes a picture of water on a leaf and writes poetry about how life is precious and short, even though he’s literally immortal.” He shook his head, skipping another rock. It skipped eight times. “I just don’t know what you see in him.” 

“I don’t expect you to get it,” I said, sitting on a large rock. “He’s been around much longer than you and me, after all. He understands life.” 

Before Jacob could comment, I got another text from Edward.  
It read, “just witnessed a dragonfly land on my knee to take a break from flying…inspiring.” 

I smiled and thought to myself, “God, I love him.”

**Author's Note:**

> This took longer than I'm willing to admit, but we hope you enjoyed it! It was super fun to work on, so hopefully it got a laugh or a smile out of you, too! I just wish I could have made it longer. ANYWAY, let us know in the comments what you thought, or send some asks on tumblr!


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